It's Not Such a Wonderful Life
by Slipstream
Summary: With all that's been happening lately, Shinji decides things would just be better if he wasn't around. His guardian "angel" thinks differently, though, and to prove it decides to show Shinj just what the Evangelion world would be like without the Third C


Author's Notes: This was inspired by 35 hours without sleep and the old movie "It's a Wonderful Life." I do not own the characters of Evangelion, nor do I own the concept behind that old Christmas move. I love Evangelion. I love "It's a Wonderful Life." I just chose to spoof them for the sake of their spoofiness, so please don't sue, and I barely have enough to keep me in anime, comic books, and carbonated beverages. I know that Shinji and Kaworu are a little out of character, but they're only that way for the sake of the plot. Rated PG-13 for some language and a really weird thought about PenPen. *laughs nervously* Suicide is not good. Neither is pushing people off of catwalks. But reading this fic is, and so is reviewing. Enjoy.  
  
  
  
It's Not Such a Wonderful Life   
By Slipstream  
  
  
Shinji sighed and stared ahead of him listlessly, leaning heavily on the guide rail suspended high above the LCL pool where EVA Unit 01 was stored. He was having One of Those Days. Heck, he'd been having One of Those Weeks, or better yet, One of Those Lifetimes. But anyway, he'd been having it rough lately.  
Everybody, it seemed, hated him, or yelled at him, or hit him, or just ignored him completely.   
  
Nobody cares, he thought to himself. He looked down, beyond the catwalk, to the golden sea of LCL beneath him. It was a long way down. Maybe, he thought, it would be better if I wasn't here at all. Maybe everybody would be happier if I was dead. With this thought in mind, he brought the toe of one sneakered foot on the bottom of the rail and slung his other leg over the top.  
  
"DON'T DO IT!!!!!!!!"  
  
The sudden shout caused him to turn his head slightly, just enough to see a gray blur slam into him. Completely surprised, he fell lost his balance and the two plunged over the side of the catwalk.   
  
Shinji couldn't be positive, but he thought he yelled something akin to "You idiot!" to the gray-haired boy before they hit the LCL with a gargantuan splash. Then everything went black.  
  
***************************************************************  
  
When Shinji finally woke up, cold, tired, and thoroughly pissed, he found himself on a smooth, sandy beach. Which was incredibly odd, since the last time he checked, he had been in the middle of the world's most secure military compound. And military compounds did *not* have beaches.   
  
He coughed up about a pint of LCL and looked around. In front of him, wave after wave of LCL crashed at his feet, and the beach extended on either side of him in a circle and stopped about 20 feet behind him at a rose colored metal wall.   
  
He heard a moan and turned to see the gray-haired boy pushing himself up off of the sand. Now that he wasn't being tackled or falling through the air, Shinji was able to get a good look at him. He was extremely pale, dressed in a school uniform like himself, with red eyes and a mop of gray hair. Shinji waited until the boy had righted himself and finished ridding his respiratory system of sand before he asked him. "Why the hell did you do that?!"  
  
The boy coughed again. "Do what?"  
  
Shinji fumed. Normally he wouldn't be this direct, but as it was One Of Those Days, he felt like he had the right to be as angry as he was. "Push me off the catwalk!"  
  
"I wasn't trying to push you off of the catwalk." His voice was low and melodious and completely lost on Shinji.  
  
"Then what do you call tackling me at high speeds, thus causing you and me to fall from an extremely high place into an extremely deep LCL pool?"  
  
He ignored Shinji's attitude and began to ring the LCL out of his hair. "For your information," he grumbled. "I was trying to keep you from committing suicide."  
  
Some of the hot air went out of Shinji's balloon. "Oh." He mumbled, and curled into a little ball and stared off across the "water." "Who are you to care whether or not I die?"  
  
The boy smiled. "I'm sorry, I never introduced myself. My name's Kaworu. I'm an angel."  
  
Shinji raised an eyebrow at him. "Yeah right. I've fought angels, and I'm sorry to say, but you're a little on the small side to be one."  
  
Kaworu sighed. "No! Not *that* kind of angel!" Yet, he thought. "I'm your guardian angel, and it's my job to make sure you decide to keep on living."  
  
"Let me guess, so you can get your wings, right?"  
  
Kaworu's smile faltered and fell. "Actually, I'm only here so I won't get canned."  
  
"What?"  
  
Kaworu laughed nervously and scratched the back of his neck. "Canned. Kicked. Booted. Bailed overboard. Lost in the transfer. Downsized. Pink-slipped" Shinji stared at him blankly. "Y'know… Fired."  
  
Shinji gave him a quizzical look. "Why would you be fired?"  
  
Kaworu laughed again, and his smile seemed a little more strained. "Well, y'see, I don't have that good of a track record as an angel. You're my last chance, so I really hope you don't decide to die on me!" He slapped Shinji heartily on the back.  
  
Shinji's eyebrow twitched. "And pushing me off of the catwalk is the way to convince me to keep on living?"  
  
"Hey, I *meant* for you to land *on* the catwalk."  
  
Shinji turned and began to watch the waves of LCL crash onto the shore. "I'm sorry, then, but I don't think that I can do that." He could just make out the head and shoulders of EVA-01 rising proudly above the yellow sea. "I have no use here, everybody hates me. I see no reason to continue existing in a world that wishes I never existed."  
  
Kaworu thought about his statement for a while, eyebrows furrowed into concentration. Suddenly he brightened. "Ah! I have it!"  
  
"Have what?" Shinji replied gloomily.  
  
Kaworu beamed. "The Answer. I will show you how the world would be if you had never been born."  
  
"And this is supposed to convince me that my life is worth living?"  
  
"Sure, sure," Kaworu dismissed him with a wave of his hand. "Saw it in a movie, once, so it has to work!"  
  
"Ah." There followed a minute of silence. "So…" Shinji ventured. "How are you going to show it to me? Mental images? Computer programs? Magic mirrors? A big white cloud that talks?"  
  
Kaworu shook his head. "Nothing that complicated. I'm going to change the world, and then we'll walk around in it."  
  
"Oh, that sounds simple." They both stood, and Shinji stood ho-humming to himself for a while.  
  
Kaworu looked at him oddly. "What are you doing?"  
  
"I'm waiting for you the change the world."  
  
"I already have."  
  
"Really?" Shinji looked around. Nothing had changed. "Sure doesn't look different."  
  
Kaworu looked smug. "That's just from down here. The people are completely different. C'mon, let's look around."  
  
****************************************************************  
  
"What are we doing here?" They stood on the catwalk in front of EVA-01, the one that they had both fallen off of earlier. Shinji eyed Kaworu suspiciously. "You aren't going to push me again?"  
  
Kaworu sighed. "You aren't ever going to let me forget that, are you?"  
  
"You're my guardian angel, I'd think you'd know that it is my nature to worry over things much longer than necessary."  
  
"Gomen, I'd forgotten about that. But we're here to look at EVA."  
  
Shinji turned to look at the EVA in front of them. The purple behemoth stared down at them with the same berserk grin it always had. Shinji looked closer along the paint job and noticed that the purple skin was dull, and rust seemed to be spreading around the joints. "It looks like it hasn't been used in a while, or even taken care of. Why's that?"  
  
"Er…hold on…" Kaworu consulted his Idiot's Guide to a World Without Shinji. He flipped a few pages, read a couple of the cartoons, growled, flipped some more pages, and finally resigned himself to looking to the index. "Ah… here it is… *achem* The first time EVA-01 was piloted, in your world, was during the first angel's attack. You were only able to sortie with EVA so quickly because EVA is the home of your mother's soul. With you never being born, Rei was forced to pilot her. It didn't go too well, and that was the last time EVA was piloted."  
  
Shinji started. "Rei? But… when I saw her, she was injured, she couldn't have piloted…"   
  
Kaworu turned the page. "Actually, she wasn't…"  
  
"Wasn't…injured? But… the blood, the bandages…"  
  
"All a scheme of your father's to get you to pilot EVA and return to him."  
  
"Father… Father cares for me…" Shinji was so happy, he thought he would cry. Or dance, if he wasn't worried about what it would do to what image he had. "He wanted me to come back, wanted to see me…" Aww, to heck with image, Shinji thought, and did a Snoopy Happy Dance on the spot. (AN: Y'know, the Snoopy Dance from Charlie Brown Christmas, when he's dancing on Schroder's piano!)  
  
Oblivious, Kaworu kept reading. "Actually, he just wanted the tax reductions."  
  
Shinji's Dance of Joy stopped mid-air. "_What?!_"   
  
"Well, you see, with you around to count as a dependent, he got some major tax breaks from the government. With you actually under the care of Misato Katsuragi, he conned the government out of the money and kept it for himself."  
  
Forgetting his joy from moments ago, Shinji shrank back into Sullen-Third-Child-Angst-Mode. "Father's a bastard." He muttered.  
  
"Y'mean to tell me you hadn't figured that out already? No wonder you wanted to kill yourself…" Kaworu tucked his guidebook into his back pocket and walked down the railing. "C'mon, there's a lot more to the world without you than NERV."  
  
Far from being what we in the United States would call a "happy camper," Shinji followed Kaworu away from the cages, leaving EVA-01 to stand silent watch over the place they had just stood.  
  
************************************************************************  
  
From the street, Tokyo-3 looked amazingly different. Shinji craned his neck to stare upwards at the innumerable skyscrapers that towered above him. "Incredible," he mused out loud. "Where did all of these tall buildings come from."  
  
Kaworu cast an indifferent eye to the steel giants. "Them? They've always been there. You just keep knocking them down with all of your battles, oblivious to them. But since this world doesn't have you, they still stand."  
  
Shinji glared at him darkly. "I thought you were supposed to be convincing me that I shouldn't kill myself…" he muttered.  
  
Kaworu faltered, thought a bit, and continued. "Well, if it's any condolence, the unemployment rate in the construction industry is just unbeLIEVEable without you!"  
  
Shinji sighed and they continued walking along the sidewalk. To fill the silence, he contemplated what he had seen when they had left NERV. The command center was unchanged ''You don't leave too much of a mark on the bridge bunnies, I guess,'" Kaworu had remarked. The people had generally ignored them, and they'd passed through the security without anyone asking questions. He strongly suspected that Kaworu had something to do with this.   
  
They were now headed toward his school, where Kaworu had said they would find "everybody important."   
Though the sidewalks were still fairly empty, Shinji saw more people than he had ever seen before out enjoying the sunshine. Mothers with their children, joggers, businessmen out for a quick lunch, street musicians, everyone was out in the fresh air with a huge smile on their face. It seemed, oddly surreal to Shinji, and he 'eeped' and backed away every time somebody smiled at him.   
  
At one point in their journey, Shinji hear a loud giggle and a laugh that sounded strangely familiar. He turned abruptly to find himself in a small park. Ahead of him, a boy with dark hair and a black jumpsuit was pushing a little girl of about four years old on a swing. "T-T-Touji?!"  
  
Kaworu peered over his shoulder. "Yep. Touji Suzuhara and his sister."  
  
"B-but, he… I…his Eva… lost his leg….arm…. and his sister…" Shinji sputtered.  
  
"You were never born, remember? You never piloted EVA-01 in the first battle, so Suzuhara's sister was never injured. And since she was never injured, Touji never had a reason to pilot Evangelion."  
  
Shinji stared glumly at the happy scene before him. He had never actually seen the little girl that he had injured, that he had taken a beaten for injuring. And here she was, smiling, happy, healthy, and giggling loudly as his un-maimed best friend spun her in circles.  
  
He sighed. "This only reassures my idea that the world is better off without me."  
  
Kaworu's brow furrowed. "Hmmm, it's not supposed to do that… we'll just have to find some other people you know to convince you!" He grabbed Shinji's hand and dragged him away from the happy scene in the park, where Touji was making his best monkey-face at his little sister.  
  
*************************************************************************  
  
**RRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!**  
  
Shinji stared at the blank white building that was his living hell, otherwise known as school. "I thought you were supposed to give me a reason for *living*!"   
  
Kaworu ignored him. He'd heard that line quite a few times so far, so it had started to loose it's affect. "Well excuuuse me, Mr. I'm An Anti-Socialite, but the only people you actually know are either at NERV or here, and since we've already been there, this is the last stop."  
  
Shinji shrugged and they headed into the building. The bell had just wrung for lunch, so all of the students were packed into the courtyard. Shinji looked at the throng of people, seeing a few familiar faces, but receiving no recognition in return. In one corner he spotted his other best friend, Kensuke Nagasaki, surrounded by almost half of the guys in the class.  
  
"What is it that makes Kensuke so popular all of a sudden?" He thought about it and groaned. "He's not selling naked pictures of Asuka again, is he?"  
  
With a wistful look on his face, Kaworu resumed his role of tour guide. "Unfortunately, no. Without you or Touji as pilots, he has been recruited, fulfilling his life-long dream. Due to the fact that he pilots a 400-foot robot, he has gathered a large circle of friends. You could too, y'know, if you *wanted* some friends."  
  
Shinji ignored him and continued looking at the people around them. They all seemed to swerve to avoid them on instinct. "Are we invisible or something," he muttered, before someone tapped him on the shoulder.  
  
Still jumpy about having his "personal space" invaded, Shinji gave a small shriek and whirled around.   
  
Hikari Horaki beamed back at him, brown hair pulled back in it's usual clips, completely oblivious to the fact that she had given Shinji a near heart attack. "Hi, I'm the class representative, Hikari. Are you two new students?"  
  
"Um…Er…" Shinji managed to gasp out between efforts of getting his heart started again.  
  
"We're considering transferring schools," Kaworu said, flashing his killer smile. "We're just having a little look around before we make any major decisions."  
  
Hikari smiled again, and was about to say something else when she was interrupted by a loud shout.  
  
"HIKARI, WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THESE LAME-OH PERVERTS!?!"  
  
Enter one Sohryu Asuka Langely. The proverbial redheaded stepchild and Second Child Extrordinare.   
  
"Asuka!" Hikari scolded. "Stop shouting! You've only just met them, so why should you be making accusations on their character?"  
  
Asuka sniffed. "Their males, Hikari. Which automatically makes them a bunch of hentai dummkoffs."   
She grabbed Hikari's hand and shoved Shinji to the ground roughly. "C'mon, let's go talk to somebody who isn't a freak." She then dragged an apologetic looking Hikari over Shinji's form and into the throng of people.   
  
Shinji sat up and dusted himself off. "Just my luck," he muttered to Kaworu. "I don't even exist and yet she *still* hates me!"   
  
"All Asukas are alike," Kaworu said as he helped him up.   
  
"Really? So my being absent doesn't affect her?"  
  
"No. She's the number one pilot, just like she's always wanted to be, and lives a chore-free life with Ritsuko."   
  
Shinji looked puzzled. "Ritsuko? Why Ritsuko?"  
  
"That's where she would have gone if you hadn't already been living with Misato during the 6th angel's attack." He laughed. "You should have seen her face when Rei had to move in with them so they could synchronize, though."  
  
"Rei…" Shinji whispered and looked around for the blue haired albino. "Where is she?"  
  
Kaworu pointed and Shinji turned. Rei was sitting in her usual spot next to the tree, eating her lunch silently and quite alone. He watched her every movement, slow, precise, the exact same as he had always seen her eat.  
  
"Ayanami… how does this affect her?"  
  
"It doesn't." Kaworu stated.  
  
"What?"  
  
"You have no affect on her life. She is the exact same here as she is in your world."  
  
Shinji was again on the verge of tears. "But… I thought she cared for me… she… she smiled for me…"  
  
Kaworu shook his head. "Sorry, kid, I wish it were different, but I'm only just doing my job."  
  
"NO!" Shinji yelled, attracting the attention of the entire student body. "So far all you've shown me just confirms what I've believed all along! But that can't be right! SOMEbody has to care for me! Somebody does!" He looked upward and a dangerous gleam was in his eye. "Misato! We haven't seen her yet! She'll care for me! She'll wish I were still alive! She will, I know it!" And with this he turned and ran wildly through the crowd, crying all the way.  
  
Kaworu gave a great sigh and sunk his face into his hands. "Lord give me strength," he muttered before turning to race after Shinji. "This is not going the way I had planned…"  
  
From beneath her tree, Rei watched the second boy chase the first boy. Calm and order soon returned to the courtyard, and Rei went unnoticed once again. She didn't mind though. She took a bite of her sandwich and thought once again of the brown-haired boy. Someone, she mused to herself, forgot to give him his medication this morning.  
  
Thus satisfied that the crisis was over, she finished eating her sandwich.  
  
****************************************************************************  
  
Shinji stood gasping in front of his apartment door, out of breath from his long run. He fumbled through his pockets to find his keycard and cursed when it was nowhere to be found. Frantically, he slammed himself against the door again and again, then realized that it was unlocked and burst into the apartment. "Misato!? MISATO!!" The apartment was a mess. Empty beer cans and dirty laundry was strewn everywhere, and a pile of frozen food containers at least a mile high was stacked next to the sink. Shinji fought his way through the piles of trash to Misato's room. "Misato! Where are you!?!"  
  
"It's no use," a voice sounded from behind him. "She's gone."  
  
Shinji whipped around and stared at Kaworu. "What do you mean…? Gone…?" His eyes brimmed up with tears. "Oh, God… she's not dead, is she?"  
  
Kaworu erfed and a huge drop of sweat formed on the back of his head. "Um… I just mean that she had gone out. Not home."  
  
"Oh…" Shinji sniffed. He looked up. "Where is she?"  
  
Kaworu blushed. "Off having sex with Kaji."  
  
"Is that all she does now?"  
  
"Pretty much. Without you or Asuka around to play guardian to, she's a free gal."  
  
Sighing, Shinji again glanced around the disaster area of an apartment. "Hey, where's PenPen?"  
  
"He's… gone, too."  
  
A look of pure disgust passed over Shinji's face. "You are *not* telling me that he's off having sex with Kaji, too!"  
  
Kaworu blushed even harder and shook his head fiercely. "No! No! Nothing like that! He's gone to the veterinarian!"  
  
A look of concern passed Shinji's face. "What's wrong?"  
  
"Without you around to do the cooking, PenPen has been living off of Misato's instant curry with soy sauce all of his life. It's caught up to him, and he now has one of the worst cases of ulcers a penguin has ever known."  
  
Shinji looked at him oddly for a minute, blinked twice, then exploded.  
  
"You mean to tell me," He yelled. "The only positive difference I make in the world is that a penguin doesn't get ULCERS?!"  
  
Kaworu winced and then nodded his head. There was silence. Kaworu cleared his throat, coughed lightly and started "Shinji?"  
  
Shinji looked up hopefully.  
  
"You're right. Your life does suck."  
  
Hopes shattered, Shinji shrank moaning into a little ball of self-despair.   
  
Kaworu waited until Shinji had stopped feeling sorry for himself and become coherent again before continuing. He kicked at the carpet with his shoe, and then said softly, "Y'know, I wouldn't blame you if you decided to go through with this whole suicide thing."  
  
Shinji rubbed at his eyes and hiccuped. "It's okay. I think I'll live anyway."  
  
Kaworu blinked in surprise. "Really? But, you saw what this world was like, what made you change your mind?"  
  
"PenPen. I feel really sorry for the little guy, and I just can't bring myself to sentencing anyone to Misato's cooking."  
  
Kaworu blinked even harder, then shrugged. "Go with what works, I guess…" He grinned evilly and cracked his knuckles. "Okay! You'll live! I keep my job! The penguin doesn't get ulcers! All's right with the world!"  
  
"Yay…" Shinji muttered half-heartedly. Whether or not Kaworu heard him, he didn't know, because the world grew bright and sparkly and then suddenly went black.  
  
*****************************************************************************  
  
Asuka was having a very boring afternoon. Shinji had disappeared soon after their sync test, so she had no one to torment, Misato was getting drunk, so she had no one to whine to, and Hikari was spending the weekend at her aunt's, which meant that Asuka was officially stuck at home. It was okay though, "Shark Week" was on the Discovery Channel, so things couldn't get too bad.  
  
The door to the apartment opened with a bang, and she looked up to see Shinji walk through the living room, feet dragging behind him, LCL dripping off of him and pooling at his feet.   
  
"You anta-baka! Why don't you wipe your feet?!" She yelled. Shinji appeared not to have heard her, though, and continued his dragging path into the kitchen. Curious, she followed, and to her surprise found a zombie-like Shinji plumping fish into PenPen's dish. She glanced over at Misato as Shinji sat himself down next to watch PenPen chow down. "What's this all about."  
  
Misato shrugged and took another swing of her beer. "Dunno. He said something about his 'sole purpose in life' and just started feeding PenPen."   
  
Asuka sighed, took it as yet another sign of Shinji's weirdness, and returned to her Shark Week.  
  
The timer on the microwave rang, a gentle beeping noise that did more than sound trumpets for the marvel of Misato's beer flavored ramen. She looked at Shinji, and hoping to cheer him up, her rational dulled by alcohol, said, "Hey, Shinji, did you know that every time a bell rings, that's when an angel gets its wings?"  
  
Shinji slowly turned to look at her, blinked, looked at PenPen, blinked, and looked at the microwave before blinking a third time. Then he went nuclear.   
  
"DAMN YOU, KAWORUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  
  
  
  
-Fin  



End file.
